Fruitcake and Firelight
by Suite Sambo
Summary: After the death of his Gran, Neville tries to keep the old family Yule traditions alive.


**A/N: **Not my usual fare. I was challenged by a friend to write ANGST involving Neville, Ginny and to use the prompt of "Fruitcake." And here is where that went. Decidedly non-canon with hints at a Harry/Severus pairing, so stop here if that is not something you want to consider.

* * *

In Gran's room, at the end of the corridor, he hangs a wreath of pine branches in the window. He ties back the dark blue velvet curtains around her empty bed with gold cord, then lights the old oil lamp on the bedside table and stands, for a long breath, watching the flame flicker in the wavy glass. He imagines he can see her reflection in the passageway, stopping to straighten a portrait with a heavy sigh.

In Uncle Algie's room, second floor, west wing, he ties a sprig of mistletoe in the wide open doorway between the bedchamber and the sitting room. Uncle Algie's stamp albums still sit, gathering dust, on the tea table. He cracks open a window to freshen the stale air.

In the formal parlor downstairs, Tipper, the mute house elf that has served the family for more than a century, carefully—as always, as ever—decorates the tree with Augusta's fine Faberge crystal ornaments, a king's ransom of fragility on the boughs of a Noble Fir. The fairy lights twinkle despondently, lighting to full glow only when he is in the room and flickering hopefully when he walks quietly by in the corridor.

In the parlor of the informal sitting room, he places the Yule log in the empty grate.

And in the tall, narrow windows that look out to the long front porch of the stately old home, he places white candles, tall pillars of soft, welcoming light.

But there is no one to welcome. Not since August, just after his birthday, when Gran did not wake up to the hottest day of the year, and Tipper found him in the greenhouse, asleep at the workbench after a night of harvesting moonflowers, and tried to pantomime death to him.

And he had understood.

In the kitchen, the fruitcake sits, perfectly cut on a silver platter under a crystal dome. Thick slices of rich brown, moist with applesauce, coloured and textured with English walnuts and figs and currants and raisins and glace cherries.

They shared it, Gran and Uncle Algie and Neville, on solstice eve, sitting together in warm if quiet companionship, in front of the slow-burning Yule log in the cozy sitting room, Uncle Algie and Gran with their tea but Neville, Neville always with milk. Cold milk, no matter the weather, from the time he was a little boy with round cheeks and earnest eyes, until now, when he is twenty-one and knows the bite of fire whisky and the warmth of butterbeer and the allure of strong coffee.

Neville puts the kettle on for tea and stands in front of the old stove, wondering why he is doing this.

Continuing the old traditions.

Decorating an empty house.

Sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter with a sad-eyed, silent house elf, shelling walnuts.

Filling the ornate sterling silver sugar bowl with sugar cubes for one.

He should have stayed at Hogwarts.

Would Gran have wanted this? Expected this?

Is this bone-deep feeling sadness or loneliness or something else, something new?

The whistle of the teakettle nearly hides the other sound. Rapping.

He waves his wand at the stove and cuts the flame. The teakettle's whistle quiets.

A creak as the front doors opens. A woman's voice.

"Neville?"

He doesn't _want_ to be alone here but somehow, inexplicably, is not in the mood for company. He sighs, though, and reaches for another teacup.

"Back here, Gin."

"Hey."

She is wearing a white stocking cap, the kind Molly Weasley makes—he has two of them himself—with the long, long point that reaches nearly to the ground. You are supposed to wrap them around your neck like a scarf. His always came undone, but Ginny's is draped loosely around her shoulders several times. Her cheeks are pink and chafed. She has a faded bruise above her right eye, undoubtedly from a bludger or a fall from her broom. She is in Muggle clothing, and is wrapped in a warm white coat.

"Harry said you might be here. Are you in the mood for company?"

"Harry said that, did he?" answers Neville, raising an eyebrow as Ginny walks into the room and eyes the tea tray. "I haven't seen Harry in at least a week."

"He's been spending a lot of time at Hogwarts," she says. "He hears things."

"I imagine he does," answers Neville. They regard each other from across the room.

"How long have you known?" she asks, carefully casual.

"About a minute," he answers. "I only suspected before that." He watches her eyes flick over to the plate of fruit cake. "Are you all right with it?"

"Oh." She looks up at him. "I was the one who broke it off with him, wasn't I? I had the biggest crush on Carmella Conners and thought I'd give it a run before I settled down with Harry. I doubt mum will ever forgive me. Silly of me to think he'd wait, wasn't it?"

"Probably," answers Neville honestly. "Harry's a good man. And a good friend." He needs her to know that, to understand he will not take sides. "So the Headmaster is worried about me?"

"We're all worried, Neville," she answers. "It's your first Christmas without your Gran, and tonight is the solstice…"

"She liked the old traditions," he says, glancing again at the fruitcake. "Well, quite a few of them were her own traditions, and had nothing to do with Yule or Christmas. But…well, they're _my_ traditions now too, and I thought—this year, anyway—I'd continue them."

He watches her as she eyed the tea tray, undoubtedly noticing the two cups. "Am I staying for tea?" she asks, even as she begins unwrapping her hat scarf. She pulls it off her head and shakes out her hair, then takes off her coat and hangs it over the back of a chair.

"Apparently," he says. He looks at her gratefully. "We're having fruitcake."

Ginny smiles. "Old family recipe, I hope?"

Neville nods. Not everyone soaks the raisins in rum, or uses applesauce along with the oil, or tops it off with white satin icing.

"Harry's family didn't have Yule traditions," Ginny says as she follows him out of the kitchen.

"Pity," says Neville. But that is all he says.

The addition of one more person doesn't return anything to normal.

The old house is still old, still quiet, still lonely. It creaks in the wind, moans with the cold.

The glass of milk is empty now, the tea cold in the bottom of the teacup.

There are crumbs on the porcelain plates, a slice of crust, a bit of nut and currant, a single plump raisin.

The Yule log burns in the grate and the firelight dances on their faces.

He's turned on Gran's old wireless. He'd hoped the music would fill in all the lonely corners of the room, make the emptiness less empty. But it reminds him of Gran. It always does. Of the way she would close her eyes and hum as the Yule log burned, a glass of sherry in her hand. How she would wait until the perfect song came on then say to him in that commanding voice of hers, her eyes still closed.

"It's time to take the old lady once around the dance floor, young man. Make me feel young again."

It was silly and awkward in the early years, when she towered above him and he was all elbows and knees and pudgy hands and stutters. But at sixteen, he was finally taller, and the awkwardness had passed, and he could manage a simple waltz without stepping on her toes.

But now, sweet Merlin, a waltz starts up and he glances at Ginny beside him on the loveseat and her eyes are closed and she is humming to the music.

And when he pulls her to her feet, and spins her slowly around the parlor, she does not smell of lilacs and there are no robes to rustle. She is as tall as his Gran, but more athletic, less graceful. She grips his hand too hard, fits her body too close to his. And when she looks up at him and smiles, her brown eyes sparkle in a face too young to be so old.

_Ah, Neville. You remind me so much of my Frankie._

"You're a wonderful dancer, Neville."

Another night, he might have smiled at her, and pressed her closer to him. Accepted the invitation. Taken advantage of her loneliness, and his.

But Gran is the only family he's ever had, really, and she's gone now, and the dance is a farce and there's no one alive that is happy he looks like his father, no one who rocked him through his nightmares and poured him cold milk on warm summer mornings.

"Are you all right, Neville?" Ginny asks.

"No," he whispers, because he's not.

She wraps her arms around his neck and rests her head against his shoulder. She's humming again.

And it's not what he needs. He wants her to stop but how do you tell a beautiful woman, one as lonely as you, that you want lavender and lullabies and cold milk and not the press of soft flesh and slow dancing and warm breath on your neck?

And later, he lies with his head on one breast, working the nipple of the other with tongue and teeth and mouth. She arches, moans, grinds up against him and he cannot believe she is naked beneath him, that Ginny Weasley's legs are wrapping around his waist, that his mouth is on her breast, that she is grinding against his cock. He is suddenly possessive, and he releases her breast and kneels above her, pulls at her hips, positions himself, sinks into her, releasing a strangled sigh.

And it is all about him now, about his loss, and his need, and the loneliness of this house, and the family he no longer has. He fills her so that he no longer feels empty. He pushes himself into her because there is an excess of him in this house, a paucity of other.

He is frantic with it at the end, with the need to complete this act, and as he comes he presses into her, groin tight against her own, and he falls onto her, his head at her neck. He does not know if she has found her own release, but she is panting beneath him.

He smells the rum-soaked raisins. The figs and cherries and currants and walnuts.

As they rest on lavender scented sheets, Neville kisses her, the possession complete as he steals back the taste of Yule.


End file.
